This weekend was pretty quiet. I was a Bad Pagan1 and didn't do any Halloween stuff. To make up for it, I'm going to have to do some really weird shit for the solstice, like in a cave or something.

Now, a story. The cat was out of clean litter, and we just recently got a big enclosure for the turtle that had separate sections for water and land, so we needed some sort of fill. Pemberton Farms, within walking distance of our house, appears to be staffed by maniacs and/or patronized by rich imbeciles: they wanted $10 for a 10lb bag of gravel. It looked to me like we would need at least 5 of those, which even for a yuppie like me is a non-starter.

maru_mari and I set off early on Saturday on a mission to get ~50lb each of gravel and cat litter without resorting to a ZipCar (because we hate ZipCar now). She had been skeptical in the past of the practicality of getting bulky objects home on the motorcycles, but today was game to try.

We decided to hit PetSmart at Alewife first and headed off along Walden St., but I quickly found my bike running lean, which is to say, faltering as though it were running out of gas. No biggie, you just switch to the reserve line and you have another 30 miles or so... but wait! In a demonstration of the foresight and brilliance for which I am known the world over, it was already in reserve. I got her attention and we reoriented toward the Double Donuts of Doom (the nearest hope of gas), but at the next light the engine stalled and that was that.

I walked my bike into the nearest parking lot, preparing to sit it out while she did a run for a can of gas. "Customers only". Hm, we'll just go ask if it's OK to sit here... hey. A hardware store?

We didn't know it yet, but this was not only a hardware store, but the hardware store. Seriously, you should never go to another hardware store.

Anyway, hardware stores have siphons. So she parked, and I wandered over to get one, and while I was in there, I picked up 60lb of gravel for $6. (See what I mean about Pemberton?)

After we struggled with the siphon for a while (both tanks being at the same level, and the curly tubing rather painful to orient), she had the bright idea of siphoning into a cup and pouring the cup into the tank. This worked great except for getting gasoline in her eye (TOTALLY NOT MY FAULT ok kinda entirely my fault), so took an eye-washing break, then made it to Hess on Mass Ave, then came back for a Dremel tool (about which she has already written extensively), then went off to PetSmart and got the cat litter without incident, thus proving again that TWO WHEELS GOOD, FOUR WHEELS BAAAAAAAAAAD.